mike656

About Me

My main motive for being part of gamedev.net is to network and interact with others who share a common interest in game design. I'd very much like to make some worthwhile friendships here that can go beyond the forums. If you'd like to get in touch, send me email at ms673@hotmail.com.

I'm an indie game designer working on a project that has taken me years to get where I'm at now, with no stop in sight. I currently have a functional/working primitive custom game engine for web based games. I'm hoping to be able to release the game within the next 24 months for a live open beta test. I'm always interested in getting help from others who are more experienced, or even those who have talent to lend, so feel free to contact me if you are inclined. If you're new to game design I welcome your contact as well. We all start from the beginning.

My project is a serious one and not a passing fancy. I'm not a kid or a teenager fantasizing about game design. This has been my passion my entire life. I'm currently a freelance web developer and computer repair technician by day and a game designer by night, chipping away at my dream.

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game design, rpg, 2d games, meeting others with similar interests for life long friendships

I have a question about how characters (player objects, if you want to call them that) are handled in games. Are they typically allowed to occupy the same space in the game world (or game map), or is it common practice that a single player's character occupies a spot and no other character can occupy the same spot until that occupier moves from it?

I'm trying to get a grasp of how things take up "space" in a game (or how is this simulated?). I know there is collision, which makes me believe that characters/objects can only occupy a space that is empty and thus things can be "collided". How is this handled in a typical 2d game? Is it handled differently in modern 3d games (like a typical FPS)? When you remove the layers of graphics from a game are they allowing multiple characters (or objects) to occupy the same point in the game space or no?

I'm struggling with this for some reason.

If a typical 2d game uses an array to keep track of tiles, are they placing multiple characters in a single tile? If I'm not clear in what I'm asking, I apologize. It's late.

Are there any references or articles I can read about how player characters are placed in game worlds in regards to how many are allowed to occupy the same point in space?

Hello everyone,
I'm new here at Gamedev.net. Although i've been surfing the pages here for many years i've never joined the community until today. Since i'm about to tackle a new project i thought it best to seek some help and guidance here from others who know more than myself.
I'm not new to programming but up until now i've been isolated in the windows world of VB6 and web based scripting. I have experience with creating VB Database Applications, simple VB games, and i've studied and dabled with things such as Python, PHP & MYSQL, but by no means am i an expert or claim to be.
I'm about to start a new project (or a new approach to an old project) and i would benefit greatly from your feedback and responses to my ideas.
I'm looking to create a 2d (isometric or possibly just ascii/text based) turn based strategy game. Something like an open-ended chess game with multiple players. Something very similar to CIVILIZATION (with troop movements, cities to interact with, battles taking place on a single plane) but with a lot of other variants. There are a number of ways i can create this and i want to avoid reinventing the wheel as much as possible, since i know these are concepts that have been put through the ringer over and over again in the game development community.
The game itself would receive its player input from data strings (either text files, emails, etc.) much like an email chess game with some automation. Players would receive turn responses in the same way. Obviously a game like this would not require much in the way of graphics. The ability to handle data strings & databases is important.
I have read through much of the resources here at Gamedev.net and i'm seeing alot of references to C#/XNA over languages like C++/C. Coming from a VB background i would like to explore writing the code with an object-oriented approach, having learned full well the limitations of an event-oriented programming language like VB.
Portability may also be a factor, since i may be initially creating the game under Windows but port to Linux.
Any opinions or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I know a game like this, in its simplicity, can be done entirely in VB because i have done something like this before. I'm looking to expand the horizons by approaching the game differently, possibly with a new language and graphics engine. The ability to build upon it is important for future growth, and i have found VB to be rather limiting.
I'd especially like to hear from anyone who has dabbled with text-based/2d, turn-based games. Any advice on possible 2d graphic engines would be welcome, as well as additional links to even more resources. As i hinted to above, this may go one of several ways, so i'm just "feeling the waters" at this point.
Thanks for your time!